Wednesday Write-in #91

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Welcome to the Wednesday Write-in!

Welcome to the Wednesday Write-in. This event runs every week to help any and all writers take control of their productivity and imaginations. Please join in; we’d love to read your work.

Prompts

outfox  ::  couture  ::  spell  ::  grate  ::  willow

Guidelines

There are no rules, but here are some guidelines:

  • Use the prompts as inspiration or try to work them into your story somehow. Use as many as you want.
  • When your story is done, post it online (your blog/twitter/in a comment here), tag with #wednesdaywritein if you like, and comment with a link so we can read it.
  • Please take the time to read and comment on as many other stories as you have time for (but we won’t shout at you if you don’t).
  • If you want to write a poem, a script, or something completely different, feel free.

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Any questions? Otherwise, have fun writing!

36 thoughts on “Wednesday Write-in #91”

  2. Pingback: Full English | patrickprinsloo

  4. Foxy

    Fox by name, foxy by nature. Humans needn’t think they can outfox me. Well, they do sometimes obviously, otherwise those haute-couture models wouldn’t have had my kind draped over their shoulders back in the day.

    Anyway, I was walking along the street minding my own business, looking for a snack if you must know, and a new home, having been evicted from number twelve. I came across a great grate across part of the pavement, I think you call it a drain. (Actually I used great and grate there because I can’t spell.) It wasn’t a problem because I just stepped over it and took the path down to the river.

    So lovely at this time of year with the branches of the willow drooping elegantly down to the water. I decided there and then that this was somewhere I could live. Lovely homes with underground accommodation, water on tap, views of open countryside yet easy access to the town. Perfect.

    So, I checked no-one else with the surname Fox was in residence, then I lifted my leg and left my gorgeous scent to sign the contract on my new address. I believe people call it perfume and they have several to choose from. We just have the one. It does the job.

    Reply ↓

  5. Pingback: Wednesday Weekly Write-In | Tessa Sheppard

  7. Hi everyone,
    Hope this gets there ok. Very rushed typing it from internet style thingy in hotel on much needed holidays, so apologies for typos in advance. Hope to get back into the swing of regular write ins soon!

    The sharp faced beast assessed the distance between us, sniffed the air and squirted the brambles behind with a pungent message. “I´ve been here. Stay away. Mine.”
    It narrowed a hungry eye, gleaming from fire coloured fur, the colour of knowing a primal knowledge of survival.
    I´d outfox the mystical magician and its wild savage ways.Willow branches bend easily in my grasp. My hedge filled with gaps like my well worn jumper with zigzag strands coming loose, sprouting with a will of its own. I slit the stretching branches and knit willow into the gaps.
    A physical barrier to deal with this realm but I gather my chicken feathers on the climb back home for the pagan element of my plan. My incatation of the mother spell to protect the mother hen and her eggs and my burning ritual in the grate of the couture coat given as a gift with the feathers will ward it off. The brash brandishing of fur is to curse myself and invoke the fury of the vixen. To maintain harmony we must respect each other boundaries, especially the ones we don´t understand.

    Reply ↓

    • I like the details in this story. There’s a lot going on and the scene is filled with textures, colour and a flare of the mystical. Great job!

      Reply ↓

    • Anyone who has ever kept chickens will identify with this! 😀 It’s a great story, full of misty magic and fizzing with imagery. Hope you’re having a fantastic holiday; it’s surely well-deserved.

      Reply ↓

  8. He is my belated contribution

    Hope you enjoy

    Roy

    Cakes #91 14th May 2014-05-14

    Prompts
    outfox :: couture :: spell :: grate :: willow

    She Had Designs on Me

    As a new designer with great ambitions I had been invited to the party to launch her new range. I was so taken in by her beauty. She weaved in and out of the gathered throng all acknowledging her supreme elegance and confidence as she weaved and swayed willow like among the glitterati in the latest clinging silk couture. It was a copy of one of my designs. Everyone was impressed; and when she stopped in front of me raised her gold and pearl cigarette holder and asked:
    ‘Would you light me?’
    I could not believe my luck. I was supposed to be under her spell and I was, willingly. I knew immediately how to outfox this doyenne of the fashion world. I leaned closer and whispered in her ear.
    ‘Of course darling,’ I raised my gold lighter and touched the proffered tip, ‘just as I lit the drawings of the new designs you stole from me and left in your studio. The ashes are in the grate in the library; but I can supply you with new ones at a price darling.’
    Her glare was priceless in defeat. She had met her match I suppose and she was in shock; but she recovered as all pro’s do and now she works for me.

    Reply ↓

  9. I realized this write-in is a bit outdated! But still, got to start somewhere:

    In the winter the boy threw the seedling along with the wood into the fireplace. It was a cold winter, and the boy kept the fire merry, but the seedling

    didn’t die. Instead, it fed on the flames and its blackened remains and grew and grew. By spring it had had stretched its dark twisted branch through the

    grate, as if in beckoning.

    “Let me go,” The seedling pleaded, it’s voice hushed and melancholy. The boy shook his head, “No.”

    In the summer the boy fetched his father’s axe from the shed and trimmed the branches down, because they were intruding so much into his armchair he was

    having trouble sitting down. He made sure he put the axe back exactly where he found it, because he wasn’t yet sure if his father could check on his axe from

    his grave in the back garden.

    “Let me go,” The seedling beseeched again, and the boy said, “No.”

    The seedling crept along the stone walls of the house, slipping through the shrapnel fissures and bombed out windows, and outside, it found the sun. The

    seedling, now a tree, bloomed large three-petaled purple-pink flowers. The boy borrowed his father’s axe again and gently sliced the flowers off, and

    scattered them over his father’s grave. Then he took a broom and carefully swept the black ash off the grass, and dumped them outside where there was nothing

    but black ash.

    “Let me go,” The tree called. The boy said, “No.”

    In the autumn the leaves cascaded onto the splintering timber floor, forming a thick carpet of red, orange and yellow. The boy gathered the leaves and fed

    them into the grate and lit them, and the fire crackled. The boy leaned into the flames, the soft glow illuminating the deep lines on his face.

    “Let me go,” The tree whispered, but there was no one left to answer it.

    Reply ↓

    • Fascinating fantasy, quite gothic and, full of suspense.
      Couple of points: formatting has gone wobbly. WordPress, eh.
      Also, where does the seedling come from? Or should the first line sentence refer to a seedling? I keep thinking about a prequel.

      Reply ↓

  12. Just having a go at something. Hope nobody minds.

    Summer Fever

    Charles, or what was left of him, was down.The Bogeymen were on him. The group didn’t waste energy going back. It conserved. It continued.
    Nothing could be done. That was life now: efficient, perpetual motion.
    The group headed for the woods. Once swallowed by its shadows, movement would be faster. Its shade would provide relief from the blazing sun and would allow the distance between hunter and hunted to grow.

    It was, Titch, the youngest, who broached it first,
    The Bogeymen got Cook!
    At the start, Scout, their leader, had tried to stop the others from depicting the hunters as anything other than a natural enemy, avoiding associations with monsters and bogeymen. This new world was strange enough. But the idea stuck anyway.
    Charles was their Cook, in effect, Scout’s second in command. His absence was bound to have an effect on the group, but Scout kept things practicalDon’t dwell.
    Her priority, at this point, was to prevent agitation from spreading. Agitation took up too much energy. It caused trouble. They had lost enough of the group to the season’s temperatures, to the hunters, to the traps.

    All of them carried war wounds. Pierce’s foot was bad. He had shredded it escaping the metal teeth of one of the traps. The summer heat only intensified the putrid smell that burst from his training shoe as he brought his wounded foot out, skin flapping.
    Put that away! Titch, again.
    Put it away. They’ll sniff us out faster, if we’re exposing any kind of weakness.Scout’s instruction was calm, but it was as much an instruction to Titch as Pierce. ‘Make sure you keep things level,’ was her underlying message.
    They needed their energy at a future point. Always.
    It was Scout who had discovered that they ran faster, thought better, heard clearer, saw further, when they were calm. Emotion was useless.

    Crack! Pressure on a branch somewhere.
    They all heard it except Titch. Luke made his way in three equal steps to a gap in the trees.
    Can you hear a bogeyman?Titch had now interpreted the others’ movements bringing her in synch with the rest of the group.
    Only two of them. They’re eating.Luke’s eyes were the best they had.
    Food! Titch’s hunger seemed more ferocious each day, perhaps because she was having a growth spurt. But they were all hungry.

    Organised and noiseless, the group made a circle around the Bogeymen. Scout could tell the Bogeymen were communicating. The noises were familiar yet strange. She attempted to numb the part of her brain that the sounds seemed to trigger.

    But Scout had already journeyed back to a time before; the fragrance of freshly cut grass hitting her nostrils. Her sense of smell sharper, now, superimposing itself on the flashback. And now the clawing crashed through her so that it fired vibrations along her nerves. The gaping maw. The first bite. Her body in spasms.
    Luke interrupted this series of reactions. Scout snapped into the present again.

    The Bogeymen’s movements had a growing sense of urgency. They must have become aware of the group somehow, perhaps the stench of Pierce’s injury had given them away.

    No time to waste.Attack!
    The group rushed at them. In a moment, the pair were pinned down. Two Bogeymen were easy enough to capture. It was when they hunted in packs, that they were a danger to the group.

    The thin Bogeyman was quick to work out Scout was the leader, but she refused to give him eye contact. The Bogeyman chattered faster. The sounds were triggering nothing now.
    This was meal time. No nonsense.
    ‘You used to be my neighbour. Don’t you remember me? Charles’ dad? Have you seen him….Charles?’
    Hunger had taken over her brain. She used her set of signals to order her new Cook to begin.

    First, he started with the plump bogeyman’s stomach, carving into it, trying not to puncture the internal organs. They wanted those to last- the best parts. The first red veiny chunk of meat was flung out to Titch who caught it in her teeth and then huddled, hands and face to the ground.

    Luke had watched closely, ready to step into the role of Cook if need be.
    Efficient, perpetual motion. Scout made it that way.
    Without her, there would have been no organisation, no group, no regular food, because it was she who taught them how to communicate. For, in this state, their mouths served only one purpose, and it was Scout who initiated the set of visual signals that now articulated their world.

    Charles was the first of them that infection turned, but Scout was the first of them to have turned whatever this existence was into something more…something new.

    Reply ↓

    • Test successful! I actually got excited when I saw the cake short & sweet title in my inbox! Weird was just telling a writer friend of mine about them this evening. I miss the Wednesday write ins-they kept me going when I didn’t have time for any other writing- that was a great group we had: the good old days!

      Reply ↓

      • Oh, sorry to disappoint. I am so not tech minded. I didn’t even realise it would show up anywhere other than the page itself. I thought I was being spammed and did the ‘Test’. Hope I’ve not upset anyone! But I miss it too. It was a great group, diverse and talented. Still can’t believe we’re talking about it in the past tense!

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